Las Cruces mayor suggests temporary decrease in minimum wage for tipped workers

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico -- Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagashima is proposing a drop in the tipped minimum wage that the city requires restaurants to pay servers.

This is an effort the mayor has suggested in order to help the restaurateurs recover from the financial losses they have been forced to absorb during the pandemic.

His proposal is to drop the tipped minimum wage from $4.10 to $2.35 which is the state minimum.

“Allow the the restaurant owners to implement the state's plan for maybe three to six months," the mayor explained.

Rebecca O'Brien, a server at The Game II in Las Cruces, believes this is OK: “It’s not going to affect us servers because our wages we basically make off of tips that we claim go back into taxes, so most of us come out with about a dollar as a paycheck.”

She thinks that if you can take the cutback it may mean you can keep your job: "The harder you work the more money you make. So whenever we get to actually work, actually serve, we are making money. At the end of the day you have to work to make money."

Others in the Las Cruces business community believe there may be more financial downfalls coming for the small business owners in the City of Crosses.

“I appreciate the gesture, I appreciate the discussion that's taking place right now. I think the focus should be what is going to happen to us in January and how are we going to get our economy back to thriving,”  Marci Dickerson, owner of The Game I and II, said.

In January, the State of New Mexico will raise the state's minimum wage to $10.50 an hour from the $10.10 it is at now.